Global copyright accord fails

The European Parliament has rejected a global agreement against copyright theft, handing a victory to protesters who say the legislation would punish people for sharing films and music online.

The vote marked the culmination of a two-year battle between legislators who supported the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and its largely young, digital-savvy opponents. Tens of thousands of activists held rallies across Europe in February to protest against the law, which they said would curb their freedom and allow officials to spy on their online activities. About 2.5 million activists signed a petition against ACTA.

European Parliament lawmakers voted against the agreement by 478 to 39 with 165 abstentions, meaning the proposed law will have to be renegotiated by the European Commission, the EU’s executive.

Labour MEP Phil Prendergast welcoming its defeat said: “This treaty lumped together anti-counterfeiting enforcement, literally a matter of life and death when fake medicines are used, and copyrights enforcement, including on the internet, which are dealt with by different EU laws. We need to update these laws, but there is no reason to tie our hands with this botched approach.”

She said it would instil fear into SMEs and start-up companies that they could unknowingly breach the labyrinthine treaty. It proposed that making the internet service providers liable for copyright breaches would turn them into internet police and lead to them breaching internet privacy rights of citizens.

It would also have used EU law to make intellectual property violation a criminal matter and enforce criminal measures, and would have allowed it to be revised without consulting the parliament, a measure described as a “power grab” by consumers organisation BEUC.

Independent MEP Marian Harkin said the agreement was vague with its provisions capable of being interpreted in too many different ways, making it unreliable. “It is an agreement between the US and the EU and not a multilateral agreement that includes the main offenders in counterfeiting such as Brazil and China.”

The person charged with bringing the treaty through the parliament, Socialist MEP David Martin, said the protection of virtual and actual good needed to be done separately, with freedom on the internet protected in all cases.

Dealing with counterfeit medicines, contraband cigarettes and fashion goods was relatively easy, did not require a treaty, but was mainly dependent on improved customs policing. When it came to the internet, a fundamental debate was needed on how to reward rights holders including authors and musicians, and internet freedom.

“Until I became rapporteur for this treaty I had not appreciated how much citizens value their freedom of the internet and it is quite different from other freedoms... We must ensure in future we balance the rights of rights-holders and freedom, and we must achieve a consensus on that before we move forward on any international agreements.”

He added that the treaty required six international signatures to come into force but he believed this would not now be available since a number of countries including Australia, Canada and Morocco would follow the parliament’s lead.